Long lines in scattered Pocono precincts

Wednesday

Nov 7, 2012 at 12:01 AM

A presidential election that drew a surge of voter turnout, combined with 911 readdressing and the shadow of a shelved controversial voter ID law helped fuel pockets of polling problems in the Poconos on Tuesday.

CHRISTINA TATU

A presidential election that drew a surge of voter turnout, combined with 911 readdressing and the shadow of a shelved controversial voter ID law helped fuel pockets of polling problems in the Poconos on Tuesday.

The lines at some polling sites resembled the waits for gas following Hurricane Sandy last week.

At the Lehman Municipal Building on Tuesday morning, voters faced a 2˝-hour wait, while those at the Bushkill firehouse were in line for an hour and 45 minutes.

Even at 8 p.m., when polls were closing, some 200 people were lined up at the Lehman Municipal Building.

"It is a great turnout. For the most part, everything was well controlled. I would love to see a turnout like this in the non-presidential elections," said Lehman Township Supervisor Paul Menditto.

April Carmody rushed to get to the polling place from her job in New Jersey. She was the last on line as the doors closed behind her.

"I didn't think there was going to be a line like this this late at night," she said.

With the heavy turnout came heavy headaches.

The Monroe County readdressing project resulted in at least a few couples voting at different polling sites Tuesday, despite living under the same roof.

In each situation, one spouse reported a new, more exact address created by the readdressing project, but the other spouse didn't update the address.

Other voters were upset because they were asked to show photo ID. Polling inspectors were asking voters to show ID as part of a dry run for the controversial law that was shelved for this election.

Still, angry voters reported confrontations where they were mandated to show an ID in order to cast a vote.

After Monroe County's readdressing project, Bruce Johnson said his polling location was changed to the Chestnuthill Firehouse.

He noticed Tuesday that a lot of voters' names, including his own, had a special note underneath saying, "ID must be shown."

"I don't know if anyone was turned away, but I know I had to show my ID to vote. I thought that wasn't correct," he said. "If you are going to say (on the County Elections Board website) in big, bold, red letters that you don't need to show your ID to vote, that's the way it should be."

The voter registration website says voters will be asked, but not required, to show an acceptable photo ID.

Johnson said he contacted Elections Director Sara May-Silfee, who told him if a voter has not voted for a while, or if they are new to that particular voting location, they must show identification.

"If someone is new to voting or they are just out of high school and don't have an ID, how could they vote?" Johnson asked.

Inactivity on the part of some 8,000 Pike County voters led to them being purged from the voter registrations rolls, which in turn created confusion at some polling stations.

At the Dingman Township firehouse, Judge of Elections Sandy Reiss noticed that by 2:30 p.m., there had been 10 provisional ballots cast. "Usually, I am lucky if I have one," Reiss said.

Voters whose names do not appear in the registration rolls must vote by provisional ballot. Each one is investigated by elections officials to understand why the voter's name was missing.

Did they vote somewhere else in the last election and fail to change their address? Was there a paperwork error? Or has the voter been inactive for a long time?

If the ballot was cast in the voting district where it belongs, the Board of Elections counts the vote.

Voters who skip voting for two federal elections are deemed inactive and purged from the rolls.

"It's a nine-year process to be removed for inactivity," said Nadeen Manzonio, Pike County Board of Election technician. Vote once and the clock is reset.

"We canceled almost 8,000 records in 2010," Manzonio said of the Pike County list of registered voters.

The list had not been purged since before 2000.

When the polls opened at the Salvation Army on Tuesday morning in East Stroudsburg, two of the voting machines were down, according to one voter. The judge of elections called for backup batteries, and the problem was fixed within 45 minutes.

And at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Tannersville, utility workers temporarily shut off electricity for 30 to 45 minutes to fix a problem before turning the juice back on.

Voters continued to cast ballots even after the power went out around 2:30 p.m.

Bruce Tarhovicky complained that every major election has a backup of voters at Middle Smithfield Township.

In an email, he said "First they tried splitting it into two voting districts which helped a little but it still is a HUGE mess since there are 30,000 people trying to vote on four machines in one little room at the township building. Lines stretch clear across the parking lot. There isn't enough parking as it is and cars are parked all over on both sides of the road for a quarter mile ..."

He said he wished the township made it easier and less time-consuming to vote.

"Due these circumstances, this voter went home without voting today," he wrote.

More than a dozen Monroe County residents who thought they had registered to vote at a PennDOT drivers license center didn't show up on voter rolls and weren't allowed to cast ballots Tuesday.

"These are people whose names weren't in the book as registered," Monroe County Democratic Chairwoman Anne Tiracchia said Tuesday night.

She estimated 12 to 14 people who registered to vote at a drivers license center were turned away from the Stroudsburg Fourth Ward. A couple other local voting districts also turned away voters because they weren't on the rolls, she said.

Tiracchia argued those people should have been allowed to cast a provisional ballot, which is set aside pending a review and final determination by the county election's board of whether it should be counted.

But Monroe County Voter Registration Director Sara May-Silfee said if someone doesn't appear on the county voter list, he or she never completed the registration process. Each person who registers to vote at the drivers license center is handed a receipt telling the voter to follow up with the local voter office, May-Silfee said. She provided a copy of the receipt.

"Your application to register to vote is not complete until your county voter registration office reviews it," the receipt states. "If you do not receive a voter identification card within two weeks, please contact your county voter registration office. "»KEEP THIS RECEIPT AS PROOF OF MAKING APPLICATION TO REGISTER TO VOTE."

Tiracchia said she suspects Republicans as well as Democrats were prevented from voting because the state Department of Transportation failed to forward voter forms to the county Voter Registration Office. Tiracchia said she will consult with an attorney before deciding whether to challenge the local polling place decisions preventing provisional ballots.

Phones were ringing at the Monroe County Voter Office starting at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, workers said. The county transferred some staffers from other departments for the day to help with volume of calls.

Many callers were trying to identify their polling places and others were checking to see if they were registered to vote.

"Phones do not stop ringing — I have 10 people answering. We cannot keep up," May-Silfee said.

Pocono Record Writers Howard Frank, David Pierce and Beth Brelje contributed to this report.

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